Chapter 55
EMBERLINE
Iwas…
I didn’t know.
Unmoored from reality, perhaps.
Like I was still floating, grasping for a rope that was forever out of reach.
The last thing I remembered was the water closing over my head, my lungs burning like they were on fire, and then…
Darkness.
Cold, endless darkness. And a voice, calling my name.
“Do not worry, Dante.” Emilia smiled sweetly, even though she looked like she was considering tearing out his throat. “I will not ask you to do anything you were not already planning.”
Right. They were talking.
I should pay attention. This conversation was probably important, given the circumstances, but listening was hard when the world kept slipping through my fingers like quicksilver.
My heart leapt into my throat when Dante braced his feet apart.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means,” Emilia said, ruthless intelligence glimmering behind her dark eyes, “I know you discovered Marcello’s secret. The role Giovanni played in covering those secrets up. That you are just finally realizing how deep the rot in the Dynasty has eaten.”
“And you covered for them this entire time,” Dante hissed. “You’re in this just as deep.”
“Perhaps I am, but I had my reasons then, and I have them now,” she snarled cryptically.
I looked between them, barely even breathing. When a vampire as powerful as Emilia saved your life, the cost would be high, and my husband was going to pay.
Dante bargained with the High Priestess to save me, and now Emilia owned him, for a cost I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Half-hidden by shadows, Nico remained quiet, but darkness gathered around him like a living cloak. No… it really was alive.
I focused on those shadows, weaving between his legs, wisps of inky black that seemed so… familiar.
“And you,” I came to attention when Emilia rounded on me, “you were careless, child. Caught snooping. Which means any hope you had of operating in secret is over. Enemies are out in the open, and now the only logical result is war.”
“Yes, I was careless,” I admitted, my jaw clenching as the full extent of my foolishness settled over me like a heavy weight. I’d fucked up my plans. I fucked up Dante’s plans. I glanced over at him, but all he was doing was staring at me with such heated intensity, I might catch fire.
“You sit on the Shadow Council,” I pointed out the obvious, trying to wrap my head around why Emilia would take such a risk. “Why are you helping us when it would have been easier to let me die?”
“Because I admire audacity.” Emilia shrugged, one of her spaghetti straps slipping off her shoulders, and I noticed the fresh punctures on her throat.
“Because I am tired of watching greedy males play games for more power. Because once, I imagined a better future for this Dynasty, and because sometimes, the smallest blade makes the deepest cut.”
She cupped my chin, tilting my face up so our eyes met. “You are going to succeed, ragazza. Or you are going to die. Either way, you have changed how this latest game will play out.”
She released me and stepped back, clapping her hands once, and a host of black-robed priests emerged from doorways.
“You need to be gone before dawn. I will have one of my boats take you back to the city. My wards will recognize you on the way out, but don’t ever come back here uninvited again, not even to save a life.”
She paused, then inclined her head the barest fraction toward me.
“I hope you succeed.” She gave me a sad smile. “Truly. It would be… refreshing to watch them fall after all this time.”
The boat was sleek, its hull painted a black deep enough to swallow the starlight. An acolyte—lacking the tattoo around his throat—poled us away from Emilia’s island with practiced ease, then turned the motor over once we hit deeper water.
Nico and Dante kept me sandwiched between them on the narrow bench, wrapped in a blanket that smelled strongly of incense. Not that it helped when I reeked of lagoon. Not when I was so cold, I doubted I’d ever be warm again.
Not when I still heard the Underworld calling me home, that dark veil parting to welcome me inside.
No. That was ridiculous.
I was alive. I was here.
I just had to believe it hard enough.
“How do you feel?” Dante asked again, tugging the blanket higher. He’d been fussing with it ever since we’d left the island.
Nico rolled his eyes.
“I’m fine, just cold. I just…” I scanned the lagoon stretching out in all directions and shuddered. “I just want to get off this water.”
“If either of us had any magic left, we would have flown you back to the city,” Dante apologized, pulling me into him.
“Anything… still hurting?” he pressed, touching the tender spot on the back of my skull, then lifting my arm to inspect the pink mark on my wrist, where I had the vaguest memory of wire sawing through tendon and muscle as I thrashed underwater.
“Everything,” I admitted, feeling like I no longer fit properly inside my own skin. “But mostly my pride. Gods, I was a fool. I shouldn’t have gone there alone. I shouldn’t have gone at all.”
He winced. “I should have come home faster. Or never left at all.”
“This wasn’t your fault.” I reached out to wrap my fingers around his forearm, instantly regretting it when he hissed, his skin marked by angry, open wounds. Nico wasn’t any better; his skin burned and blistered through the tattered fabric of his clothing.
“I was reckless. Impulsive. And I knew better.” My mouth twisted. “Uncle Gio always played the long game; he probably saw me coming from a mile away.”
“Did you two… fight?” Dante’s calm tone was edged with the kind of rage that settled deep into bones, that brought down empires.
“I was hit from behind. But I know it was him,” I whispered, watching his knuckles turn white as he clenched his hands, murder written on his face. There had to be something wrong with me because his rage made me feel protected. He made me feel safe. And he made me feel loved.
“He’ll regret tonight,” Nico cut in. “He’s put himself at the top of a very short list of mine.”
My lips twitched. “I didn’t even know you could write, Nico. Now, I find out you have a list. Impressive.” I desperately needed some normalcy right now. Something to light up this darkness that seemed to stretch out all around me.
“It’s a long list, actually,” Nico muttered defensively. “I might not have gone to all the fancy schools, but I’m quite good at writing, thank you very much, principessa.”
“Emilia knows,” I breathed, shooting a look at the silent priest commandeering our boat. “About everything. I don’t like that.”
“Nothing we can do about that now,” Dante turned his gaze away from the city, “We’ll need strong allies. Especially once the tide goes out and Gio finds you gone.”
“There’s no explaining away a missing body,” I leaned into Dante, shivering, weighed down by this mistake I couldn’t take back. “He’s going to know I’m alive. He’ll come after us.”
“Not if he thinks your body was carried away by the turn of the tides.” Nico stared out across the water. “Not if you stay hidden and give him no reason to believe you’re alive.”
I looked between them. “There is no way a body just… disappears.”
“I ripped out an intake grate and the stone around it.” Dante rubbed my hand between his. “Opened the entire basement up to the canal, and tonight’s tide was an acqua alta. When the tide goes out, that’s all he’ll see. A hole, instead of the place where he chained you up.”
For a minute, I mulled this over, weighing the chances that Giovanni DiRavello—master manipulator with overdeveloped paranoia and deep-seated trust issues—might actually believe I’d been sucked out to sea.
“That’s a big assumption.” I was already shaking my head. “Giovanni will…”
What? Put on diving gear and do a search and rescue mission of the entire lagoon?
Highly doubtful.
“Okay.” I was nodding. “Okay, maybe this could potentially work.” Except for the part about me hiding away, which didn’t fit at all into my plans. “How can we use tonight to our advantage?”
“Advantage?” Dante’s entire body shuddered, like he’d been hit by lightning.
“You were dead,” he snarled, the words tearing out of his mouth like he couldn’t stop them.
“You fucking died in my arms, Emberline. I thought…” He swallowed, throat bobbing.
“I thought I lost you. I used my magic, I tried to drag you back to the world, but I couldn’t.
” Fear thrashed in his wild eyes, like he was fighting to master himself and failing.
I covered his hand with mine. “You’re wrong. You did drag me back.”
I’d stood in front of that wide-open veil, the darkness beyond beckoning me to cross over, and I couldn’t. Not without Dante.
I didn’t know if that made me a coward or the most selfish female ever born, but there it was.
The sad and rather pitiful truth. I was wholly, completely, tragically in love with Dante Dominico.
He was the real reason I’d come back from the dead—well, outside of the magic and the blood and the forbidden ritual.
Him.
“I’m sorry.” I touched his face. “I’ll limit my resurrections in the future. Emilia was right, they seem… to leave me feeling a bit messy.”
“So, we have a plan.” Nico was studying me with entirely too much intensity. “Emberline goes into hiding, and Giovanni will waste time and energy wondering where her body went and will scramble to cover up his sins. Let’s figure out how to keep the pressure on.”
Giovanni believed his secrets were safe.
He was wrong.